Charles H. Bennett and Gilles Brassard have won the 2024 Turing Award-the 'Nobel Prize of computing'-for their 1984 invention of quantum cryptography.
Their BB84 protocol uses quantum physics to create encryption keys that self-destruct if intercepted-making eavesdropping physically detectable.
Bennett, 82, is an IBM Fellow in New York. Brassard, 70, is a professor at the University of Montreal. They met in 1979 in Puerto Rico and began collaborating after Bennett proposed an unforgeable quantum banknote.
The Association for Computing Machinery called BB84 "a pathway toward securing digital communications in the decades ahead."